A Jurassic World of science fiction

Nightmares of living dinosaurs should remain in our dreams and at the movies (Source: Universal)

The next instalment in the Jurassic Park saga has just been released.

As with each of the preceding episodes, Jurassic World is hyped around the dinosaurs and other ancient denizens of the past bought back to life through the wonders of genetic engineering.

The science focus falls on two questions: can we really recreate extinct creatures with modern technology and just how accurate are the reconstructions of dinosaurs depicted in the movies?

This time around, being over 20 years since the first movie came out, it's worth revisiting these questions because the science around both has evolved rapidly over last two decades. Unfortunately the film makers have failed to keep abreast of the science and their depictions of the science seems to have fossilised in the early 1990s.

I'm not sure if Michael Crichton, the author of the original Jurassic Park novel, was disappointed with the success of the movies. 'Disappointed' because that success was all about riding a wave of dinomania, rather than focusing on the issues surrounding potential threats of genetic technologies that were at the heart of his writing.

But that's probably just as well because, as a critique of genetic technology, Jurassic Park has always been a theme of fluff and fancy. That is particularly unfortunate because there was a much more interesting story to tell around the reality of genetic engineering that has taken a different path toward resurrecting extinct species.

Crichton's intention was to illustrate the awesome and evil power that could be unleashed through tampering with genetic information. The killing rampage of the born-again dinosaurs was a consequence of humanity's tinkering with Mother Nature's deepest secrets. It was a morality tale, a portent of doom that we ought to heed lest we unleash on ourselves destruction from the distant past. Crichton's ultimate aim was not simply to urge caution around genetic technology, it was to shut it down completely. Fortunately his message has been ignored.

Advances in genetic engineering

The succeeding 20 years since the release of Jurassic Park has seen huge strides in genetic engineering with enormous benefits already reaped for humanity and the promise of more to come.

Most of the successes of GM technology have been in the areas of health and medicine, with new techniques to produce insulin for diabetics, treatments for a host of other diseases and break throughs in the search for cures and treatments of many others.

Patient-specific treatments are now possible because we can read the genetic code of anyone cheaply and efficiently - all benefits of genetic research that Crichton would rather we hadn't pursued. Then there are advances in agriculture and food production, more controversial in the popular eye but advances none-the-lest that have increased food production, productivity and quality.

Even in its day, Crichton's handling of genetic technology was clumsy at best. He came up with the idea that dinosaur DNA could be extracted from the remains of insects that fed on their blood and were subsequently trapped in amber (fossilised tree sap). This was absolute poppy-cock. He then suggested that gaps in the DNA could be patched up with the DNA of frogs, possibly the worst candidate he could have selected because they are so far removed from dinosaurs as to render their DNA meaningless to the cause. If the creatures in Jurassic Park were a hybrid of frog and dinosaur DNA, why didn't they look the least bit frog-like?

Constructing a dino from DNA

In fact, if you did want to reconstruct a dinosaur from DNA, there was a much more logical pathway to do so, which was, ironically, highlighted in the original book and movies.

Birds are direct descendants of the dinosaurs, they are in fact living dinosaurs but highly modified for flight. That means that inside the DNA of every budgie and every eagle there is most of the genetic information needed to rebuild their dinosaur ancestor. All you have to do is figure out which genes have been switched on or off in the transition between dinosaurs and birds then reset those genetic switches. There is probably some other genetic tinkering that would need to occur, but nothing like the genetic leaps of faith required to build a dinosaur out of a frog.

And this line of research has been pursued. Sometime back we figured out how to flick the genetic switch that stops modern birds from developing teeth. All the genetic information for teeth-building is sitting there in the DNA of every bird, inherited from their dinosaur ancestors, but just switched off and lying dormant.

Earlier this year we figured out how to flick the switches around the development of a beak - that distinctively birdie feature that evolved from two bones at the tip of a dinosaur's snout called the premaxillae. Once again the genetic tools are all still there in the bird's DNA to build a dinosaur-like snout instead of a beak, it's just that some switching has gone on so that whole developmental pathway goes off down a different route in birds. Get in there and reset the switches and bingo: you've got a beakless chook with the snout of a small meat-eating dinosaur.

Looking ahead on this line of research you must be curious to know if we will one day recreate a T rex from a cockatoo? I think this is highly unlikely. There are so many switches to reset as well as other genetic manipulations such as redeveloping genes that have been lost or deleting genes that have been gained, that I think even this more viable path for dinosaur resurrection will ultimately fail. But it's at least a provocative demonstration of the fact that there is a dinosaur ancestor lurking in the heart of every turkey and every sparrow.

Jurassic howlers

One of the biggest howlers in the latest Jurassic World stems from advances in palaeontology around the evolution of birds from dinosaurs.

Fossils found over the last 20 years clearly show that the most distinctive feature of birds, their feathers, actually evolved in their meat-eating dinosaur ancestors. We now have fossils of dinosaurs very closely related to Velociraptor that show the whole group were covered in feathers with particularly long feathers on their arms.

Going further back down the family tree and close relatives of Tyrannosaurus have been found with downy feathers covering much of their body. So have the movie makers moved with the times and dressed their Velociraptors and Tyrannosauruses in feathered finery? Nope. And the only justification I've heard for them not depicting this advance in dinosaur palaeontology is that a feathered dinosaur just doesn't look scary enough!

There are other trivial mistakes in the depiction of the dinosaurs and other extinct creatures in Jurassic World readily apparent in the pre-release trailers but hey, I'd just be being a dino-nerd if I were to go to town and list them all.

The take-home story is that this is a movie, it's about entertainment, not factual content to be viewed as a documentary. I for one am glad that we didn't take the three preceding episodes seriously, even if there was some intent for us to do so. Nightmares of living dinosaurs should remain in our dreams and at the movies.

About the author:Dr Paul Willis is the director of RiAus, Australia's unique national science hub, which showcases the importance of science in everyday life. The well-known palaeontologist and broadcaster previously worked for ABC TV's Catalyst program.